Avatis
"Even among the frozen wastelands a jewel of the ancient past continues to stand firm and challenge them, allowing life to grow strong and tame the land; we are the caretakers of that jewel, and we shall not allow any harm to come to it" -Avatis Honor Guard Creed Far to the north, west of the northern most shores of the North-eastern continent one can find the grand island of Avatis, besieged by constant blizzards and with treacherous frozen seas surronding it; many wonder how someone could live in such a place; the answer is quite simple, Avatis was founded around the remains of a far more ancient and advanced civilization, what is commonly known as Lost Tech can be easily found among its ruins and under the guidance of the Church of Syria much of it has been restored and used to make the conditions far more easier to handle for its inhabitants. The Citizens of Avatis When people first migrated to this frozen land and found the ancient remains of the long lost civilization that used to dwell in here they immediatly contacted the Church of Syria, with the aid of the priestess and their acolytes it did not take long to figure the optimal places to build cities as well as the start of the restoration project to the ancient devices found in this place. They found 6 massive pillars, 5 spread around the island and the final one on its center; they found out that repairing them would cause a barrier to keep the merciless blizzards at bay and thus a community that would later turn into a full fledged city emerged around each one; as each was repaired in turn it would connect to the nearby ones further increasing the area protected by the barrier until eventually nearly the whole center of the island was protected and slowly allowed the cities to further increase in size and the founding of new ones to occur; this was a vast contrast to the area closer to the shores of the island, everything outside the barrier was still under the merciless assault of the constant blizzards. The Machinists of Avatis Following the teachings of the holy Church of Syria, the priestess and acolytes taught many of the citizens of Avatis how to repair the ancient devices found in the deep ruins that dot the landscape, furthermore they also taught them how to reproduce some of them and thus many of the cities are nowdays covered by an ever present cloud of steam.Thanks to this Avatis is the primary source of the Lost Tech for the general public, unlike the far more advance and often hidden one found on the Crawling Sands by their diggers. The land of Avatis is ruled by a council of 6, each leading one of the city-pillars that keep the barrier working; still any of their decisions particulary those that concern the use of Lost Tech must first be passed by a High Priestess of Syria that serves as an advisor to the nation as a whole. The Cities of Avatis The vast majority of the settlements in Avatis are not so much built as they are cleaned up and thawed from the frozen land, the remains of the ancient cities that used to dot the land, this has allowed for new cities to spring up in a relatively short time; those that have to be built from scratch often follow the same patterns if not the materials used in the rest of the cities. Perhaps the most awe-inspiring ones have to be the 6 pillar cities, originally a small settlement built around each of the towering spires in order to rebuild and activate the ancient devices set in them; at first they only cleared the nearby buildings to use as shelters, eventually the settlers found that the insides of the pillars were spacious enough to serve as shelter as well and as they needed to travel further up to pillar to work on them, they began building their settlement inside as well by the time the pillars have been fully repaired they had become so used to living in the pillar that the nearby lands were instead used only for trade post with other cities and farmland.